Our roller coaster ride with neuroendocrine cancer, parenting, and life.

Month: September 2017

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to read it, or if I could muster the courage. But after the fourth good friend – the kind of friends who know you and know what you like and don’t like, and what you can handle, or not – told me I needed to read The Bright Hour by Nina Riggs, I decided to give it a go. To fill you in, The Bright Hour, A Memoir of Living and Dying, is Nina’s personal story of her battle with aggressive breast cancer that ultimately took her life in February 2017. And to add even more meaning to her amazing work, she lived right here in Greensboro – so as she writes about taking her boys to the Greensboro Science Center or her jaunts to the Duke Cancer Center for treatment – it was warmly familiar to me on multiple levels.

Ironically, I first heard of Nina in fall of 2016, when my friend Annie who lives in NYC shared an article on Facebook. It was one of those entries from the Modern Love series the Times does, and was written by Nina. It touched me then but I did not realize the author was in my city. That could mean that I’m a sucker for a good love story but don’t always pay attention to the details.

If you find the time to read her book, you will be glad you did. Her courageous and “real” approach to living and managing the disease, while carefully tending to her marriage, and lovingly tending to her two young boys is exquisite. If you play the Kevin Bacon game (6 degrees of separation, right?) I could win with regards to Nina, because apparently I have a few acquaintances who knew her personally. I love that about Greensboro – small enough to know many here, but big enough to not feel smothered. After reading her book I feel like we could have been friends. That is what makes a book good, don’t you think? Anyway, check it out. You’ll be glad you did.

In our region of Cancerland the news is pretty good. Don had a scan last week at Duke. This was the “fancy scan” – the Gallium 68 Scan – which they say is the best one for NETs patients. It was a bit of an episode before he was finally able to climb into the machine, but he “pushed through” (his words) and was able to get a good scan. Results tell us that they did see the two tiny lesions on his liver that we knew were there; and they also saw a small spot about the size of a penny between his liver and stomach. There is a chance this may not be a lesion, but might be scar tissue from surgery, so that is TBD. But Dr. Morse did not feel that a biopsy was necessary, so we will keep our eyes on this. The next scan, scheduled for December, will tell us more, one way or the other. All in all, this is a good report. We are breathing easy; or as easy as one can breathe when you have this kind of thing on your radar screen all the time. Let’s see – Scale of Breathing Easy – 1 (super easy) to 10 (not easy) – I think we are at a 3 or 4. That’s pretty good.

In her memoir, Nina mentions how a radiation technician taped the word FAITH to her cane, and encouraged Nina to have faith because it will make a difference. Nina said her boys began to refer to her cane as Faith, “Mom, don’t forget Faith!” “Mom, have you lost Faith?” And Nina writes, “Some days I don’t need her at all, some days I depend on her heavily. Faith is what keeps me moving forward.” Sounds familiar.